A long while back, my friend Joe Reis highlighted this video from David Ogilvy. Talking the language of Direct Response, I think it useful to point this out, again.

One thought as you watch, is to remember that there’s s fine balance between living your marketing world on a spreadsheet, and getting your audience, as Godin highlights in a recent blog post.

I think it wise to point the importance of balancing your analytics motivated marketers drive to believing the numbers, like my Twitter buddy, Dennis James advocates, with your branding and creative guys. While numbers can definitely help you steer your ship, and know where you are. They don’t give you the reason, catalyst and motivation for picking a direction. It’s important to remember innovation, not marketing and sales for commerce sake. Brands like VICE, have built global empires off of being creative, and using there instincts. I promise you, they’re not metrics motivated.

While I am not advocating making blind decisions, I am saying that somewhere, somehow, Direct Marketers have broken off into a boring enterprise of decision-making by numbers. Sometimes numbers are a waste, sometimes we all need to take a minute to read Malcom Gladwells, “Blink“. Sometimes, we just need to tell the creative guy to think a bit more logically. In the end, it comes down to balancing the powers that be.

Recently, I embarked on an email optimization program that was motivated by wanting to make a better product, but I had no numbers to justify my changes. I made the messaging more engaging, the creative more exciting and in the end, the numbers spoke volumes.

Without sourcing a spreadsheet, we moved the needle massively. We creatively worked with our direct response motivations to optimize a channel with numbers like +50% increase in conversion, +15% increase in click-through, 0% opt-out’s. Seriously, we did that.

Point is, we blurred the lines between direct response and creative, making something better because we had the instincts to tell us it would work, and what was right. Our numbers justified our motives. We could of spent months using a data method for that; instead, we used our developed instincts to shorten the distance and time, to success.

While watching Ogilvy, I encourage you to ask yourself how you can heed his call, while keeping people in mind. By this I mean, don’t forget whom we’re all working for.

Enjoy~!